Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Rosario Vampire or any characters.
Stubborn Self Doubt
I remember the first time I met her, I was eight years old and just hanging out at the park with some friends. We saw a girl with blue hair and violet eyes come in with her mom. Her mom started talking to my mom, she came and introduced herself to me and my friends. My friends were excited to meet her, but me being the mature eight year old boy I was, said "Sorry, we don't hang with girls". As if getting over temporary amnesia, my friends agreed. She cried and told her mom, and my mom got angry at me and told me to be nice to her. Begrudgingly I introduced myself to her "I'm Tsukune..". She played on the jungle gym with me and my friends for hours. Turns out she was more athletic than all of us, we could not beat her in tag, or any other game. To tell the truth it was fun, and we all wanted to overcome the obstacle of beating this "unbeatable girl". In what felt like only minutes, dusk came, and my mom called me over. I was sad, I didn't wanna say goodbye to my new friend, even if she was a girl. Kurumu hugged me, I returned the hug, temporarily forgetting my phobia of girls, and said goodbye. My mother informed me that I'd be seeing my new friend more often, her and her mother had moved in next door. I felt really happy. She was even in my class in school and we were pretty much inseperable since then. Everything was great, I had a best friend and someone to keep me company at all times. Everything was great alright, until 7th grade. I was 12 years old and I was starting to notice girls. I developed a crush on Kurumu, this was a problem, she had grown to be a beautiful girl and despite how ridiculously close we were, I figured there was no way in hell she would ever like me back. I wasn't sure how accurate my thinking was there was a lot of things that conflicted that way of thinking, her being at my house all the time, her kissing me on the cheek whenever she said goodbye now, and her giving me much longer tighter hugs. I wrote all of these off however toward the end of 7th grade when she got a boyfriend. By the end of 7th grade she was the most developed girl in school. Any thought of me ever having a chance with her went right out the window, there were boys always talking to her. I remember when she entered the relationship, it was the second to last day of school, and she got a text message while she was at my house watching TV and joking around with me. She was just asking me why I've been keeping more space between her and myself on my couch, I didn't wanna tell her that my feelings make me feel awkward around her, she was still my best friend and I didn't wanna hurt her feelings. As I was about to make a lame excuse, she said "oh wait I got a text gimme a sec". I sighed in relief and she suddenly squealed, "OMG Sakazuki asked me out! I'm sorry Tsuki I gotta go". I pretended to be happy for her but I was hurt, badly. I watched her run to her house from my window and sighed, I decided to go upstairs and drown out my hurt and sadness in the form of violent video games. Over the summer I avoided her a little bit, I would tell her I'm busy, I didn't feel well, or just not answer texts or calls for days. I hated behaving this way, but I couldn't face her or I might blab about my feelings. During 8th grade, I kept to myself a lot, however there was this other girl who I met, she was beautiful too, her name was Moka. I started to hang out with her a lot, the few times I did hang out with Kurumu, she would say how much she disliked Moka, If i didn't know any better I would say she was jealous, but once again I brushed it off. I finally asked Moka out, and she said yes, but things didn't work out, as most eight grade friendships go. The time for the big 8th grade dance came around, Kurumu kept asking me if I was going and wanted to hang out with her there if I was. I put off answering her as long as I could, she grew angrier and angrier at me, until one day I guess she couldn't take it anymore, she cornered me one Saturday morning in my room, my mom let her in all of the time, she was basically another member of our family at this point. Kurumu said "I see you're finally awake, now there's nowhere for you to go, spit it out, why the hell have you been avoiding me for months now?!". Half asleep I said "I didn't wanna interrupt you and your boyfriend". That didn't go over too well for her, but she didn't get mad, she was more concerned. "Tsukune you're my best friend, you wouldn't get in between he and I.." she said almost hurt. I just sleepily groaned, I finally sat up and said "I'm sorry Kurumu I won't be such a douchebag anymore". She smiled and sighed "It's okay I'll forgive you this time but don't let it happen again!" and then hugged me tight like I just came back from overseas after months. I finally told her that I wasn't going to the 8th grade dance, that I would rather hang out with my other friends that night and I told her to have a good time. For a split second there was a look of hurt on her face and said "oh...okay Tsuki, I'll make sure to tell you everything afterward! I'm gonna go back home and let you get dressed, we're hanging out today so get moving!". Typical Kurumu, forcing me to wake up on Saturday morning to hang out with her. Everything went back to normal again after that without incident, until my cousin came for a weekend. Over that summer, Kurumu had developed even further, I would steal glances at her, and my 14 year old mind daydreamed of grabbing her large breasts. She was hot, seriously, not even just because I was crushing on her, even more boys tried to get with her. It seemed crazy to me, that all of these guys wanted her and she didn't seem interested. My cousin was two years older, his name was Kakashi. He was interested in Kurumu, and flirted with her all weekend, he didn't know about my crush, but I secretly grew angry at him and resented him for it. She liked him back, I wasn't sure why, but my mind equated the reason for her interest in him to be his muscular form. He played baseball at his school so he spent a lot of time in the school's weight room and had a membership at his local gym. Kurumu would always ask me about him after that weekend, I would always say I didn't know what he was up to. I secretly talked to him almost everyday asking him workout advice, after a few months working out about five days a week at the local gym I was getting the results I wanted and was looking good. I did this for the attention of Kurumu, but it seemed to have the effect desired of her on almost every other girl I spoke to. That summer, Moka made a return to my life after seeing me in gym class with my shirt off to towel the sweat off, she approached me and said "Hey Tsukune... why don't we try us again?". I considered this, but bitter at the fact that Kurumu still wanted my cousin and not me, and figured I wasn't getting her anyway, I said yes. The summer leading to high school was filled with Kurumu once again displaying her disdain for Moka and avoiding hanging out with me and Moka when I invited her along, Kurumu was still my best friend and I wanted her to get to know my girlfriend. There was a week left before high school started..